20 Second Timeout

20 Second Timeout is the place to find the best analysis and commentary about the NBA.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Box score from Larry Miller's 67 point game

Here is the box score for Larry Miller's 67 point game. Unfortunately, I am unable to post it in a more readable format at this time. A special thank you goes out to Dick Palmer, who broadcast the game and provided this information from the stats he kept that night.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Two ABA Themed Articles in July 29 Sports Collectors Digest

I contributed two ABA themed articles to the July 29 issue of Sports Collectors Digest; one focuses on Larry Miller's ABA single game scoring record and the other is my first person account of the ABA Reunion, which was held during NBA All-Star Weekend in Denver. The articles are not available online, so I cannot provide a link to them. However, I would like to share some background information to supplement what appears in the stories--sort of a literary version of a director's cut, providing bonus material if you have already read the articles and encouraging you to track down a copy of the issue if you haven't already done so.

Miller, a 6-4 guard for the Carolina Cougars, scored 67 points in a 139-125 victory versus the Memphis Pros on March 18, 1972. He accomplished this by shooting 25-39 from the field and 17-23 from the free throw line. He missed his only three point attempt and contributed eight rebounds and four assists. Miller not only set an ABA record with this performance, but he broke Jerry West's record for most points in a pro game by a guard. To this day only David Thompson (73), Michael Jordan (69) and Pete Maravich (68) have surpassed Miller's mark for guards.

The aftermath of the 67 point game is at least as dramatic as the game itself. Miller recalls, “I lived in a house by a lake (near Greensboro) at that time. The night I broke the record was a Saturday night. Two days later my house burned down. The night before that (teammate) Wendell (Ladner) was at my house for dinner. It was just an amazing series of events. (At first) We thought that (the fire had been caused) because his wife was smoking. We had a sand ashtray that everyone put their cigarettes in.” The blaze was actually started by a lightning strike. “It started where the TV was plugged in and it burned out from there. It was about four o’clock in the morning. I had to run across the lake in my underwear to my nearest neighbor. I had a big gash in my left hand, my shooting hand. I lost two dogs under the bed and all the belongings in the house. I didn’t even have a uniform. We had a game in New York that night against the Nets in Long Island. We were in the running for the playoffs. The insurance man got a uniform and got it cleaned. I went to the hospital. They sewed up my left hand with 11 stitches. We found me some clothes. The team went up to New York. I caught a later plane in the afternoon and took a limo to the arena. I played that night with 11 stitches in my shooting hand…and we won the game.”

Miller adds, “I still have scars from it. It goes from about that first line on the ring finger to the tip. It was a strange story. If that had happened today it would be all over the news.”

The ABA Reunion article is accompanied by two photos that I took, one of George "Iceman" Gervin autographing ABA basketballs and the other of Julius "Dr. J" Erving autographing some items for fan Branio Buckner, who has an interesting story to tell. Buckner and some of his friends attended the first NBA Slam Dunk Contest, held in Denver in 1984: “We were sitting in the stands and maybe about an hour before the Dunk Contest started we were trying to figure out some props or what we could do to be seen or something. I thought about some cardboard boxes, so I went to the box office and asked if they had any empty boxes. They said, ‘Yeah,’ so we got them and ripped them apart. Then we asked if they had a marker and they said, ‘Yes,’ so we got a marker and wrote zero to ten on the cards. We went back to our seats and started testing the crowd. Every time somebody dunked we raised up a ‘5’ or if they deserved a ‘10’ we’d give them a ‘10.’ Dr. J got a ‘10,’ so we gave him a ‘10’ and the crowd just went crazy. So we just kept going that day. Then the Rocky Mountain News approached me and asked me some questions. Also, Sports Illustrated took some pictures and they put me on the videotape. I’m on the (dunk contest) videotape that year.”

Although Buckner received a lot of media attention for his impromptu contest judging, he had never met Erving prior to the ABA Reunion. Buckner explains how he finally got to share a moment with Erving after waiting more than 20 years: “I got introduced to Fatty Taylor. I knew that he was a former ABA player and I was working with him to help promote and sell tickets for the ABA Reunion Party and he said that he would make sure to introduce me to Dr. J and let him see the cards and pictures that I saved for 20 years.” Erving graciously autographed Buckner's handmade signs, a copy of the 1984 Sports Illustrated issue containing a story about Buckner and several other items.

Erving is Buckner's all-time favorite player. Among active players he likes Earl Boykins and Carmelo Anthony. The night before Buckner met Erving he got his picture taken with Magic Johnson during one of the many All-Star events that were held in downtown Denver. Buckner says, “Now I have pictures of the two players I idolized.”

Monday, July 25, 2005

Check out my Interview with the "Big O"

Oscar Robertson achieved tremendous success at every level of the game, including two Indiana high school championships, two Final Four appearances, an Olympic gold medal in 1960, an NBA title in 1971 with the Milwaukee Bucks and selection as one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players. Robertson is perhaps best known for being the only NBA player to average a triple double for a season (30.8 ppg, 12.5 rpg and 11.4 apg in 1961-62); in fact, Robertson averaged a triple double overall during his first five years in the league: 30.3 points per game, 10.6 assists per game and 10.4 rebounds per game. He is the all-time career leader in triple doubles with 181 (Magic Johnson is a distant second with 138 and Wilt Chamberlain is third with 78).

In 1955 Robertson led Crispus Attucks to the Indiana high school basketball championship. Attucks was the first all-black team to win the title and they repeated as champions in 1956 with the first undefeated championship season in Indiana prep basketball history.

The "Big O" set the NCAA Division I career scoring record with 2973 points (33.8 ppg) in his three seasons at the University of Cincinnati (freshmen were ineligible for varsity play at that time) and 45 years later he still ranks seventh. Everyone who outscored Robertson played four seasons except for the player who broke his record and still tops the list--"Pistol" Pete Maravich, who poured in 3667 points (44.2 ppg) for LSU. Maravich and Robertson played against each other for four years in the NBA. While Magic Johnson has said that Maravich was "ahead of his time" and Isiah Thomas once called him "the best showman of all-time," Robertson has a more measured view of his fellow Hall of Famer. For more details, check out my interview with Robertson here (9/2/15 edit: the link to HoopsHype.com no longer works, so I have posted the original interview below):

In your February 15, 2004 New York Times column you wrote, 'The game is
won between the foul line and the basket, an area where so few players
choose to or are able to operate.' You were renowned for your skills in that
area. How did you develop that aspect of your game? Why do you think that so
few young players have emulated that and added it to their games?"

Oscar Robertson: I was taught to play that way when I was in high school and even
before I got to high school. Just fundamental things – I played guard and I
played forward, so you get into a position where you are pivoting out on the
court. You get the ball 12 feet from the basket and a man is on you, so you
have to create space to get off a shot. You can't just turn around and shoot
because he might block it. But if he is really playing you that close, you can
get by him easily. If he is playing off you, then you can just shoot the
shot. It's just something that I learned from playing in high school. All
the guys from where I was from played that way, I thought. You look at
today, it's a different situation. You have a game that has been transformed
into a game where almost every shot is either an outside shot – a three-point
shot – or a dunk.

You get that because teams are playing a lot of zone
defenses. College coaches want to power the ball inside, they want (their
post players) to power the ball up, but no one can shoot from that 15-foot
area anymore. You see what happens in college and high school games today – a
three-point shot or a dunk. I think that's the reason that you see a lot of
that in the pros today. I don't think that players learn how to play any
other aspect of the game in high school or college.

Was there a particular player you watched as a kid who you wanted to
emulate, who had that type of mid-range game?

OR: Actually I watched a lot of Sihugo Green, who played at Duquesne
University. I saw him play a lot. There were not a lot of televised
basketball games in those days, but I did get to see him play in films. He
was from New York and then he played for Duquesne. A great All-American.

(Sihugo Green, a 6-3 forward who had tremendous leaping ability, scored a
game-high 33 points to lead Duquesne to a 70-58 win over the University of
Dayton in the 1955 NIT Championship. At that time the NIT title carried as
much – if not more – prestige than the NCAA title. Green was the No. 1 pick in the 1956 NBA Draft ahead of Bill Russell. He played
nine years in the NBA but never averaged more than 12.7 ppg.)

George "Iceman" Gervin told me that a player who really influenced him
was Roger Brown. He said that Roger Brown had this great move in which he
would get his leg past his opponent's hip and put the defender in a recovery
situation. Then, even if the defender could recover, he would be
overcommitted and Roger could pump fake and shoot the jump shot. I think
that this is similar to what you were talking about in terms of pivoting and
setting up your shot. Why do you think that so few players today do that
type of maneuver of one quick, hard dribble and then shooting the shot?

OR: Man, they just keep dribbling and dribbling and dribbling. That's
the way they play. They want to look good doing it but it doesn't work all
the time. I think that basketball players should get the job done no matter
how it looks on the screen. When you play against different
people from all walks of life you can't do the same thing against every
player defensively or offensively. You have to change up the way you go at a
player. Some players are more physical than others, some play with more
finesse. Some are just really great all-around players. So you have to
change your game.

So when you were on offense you would read your defender, read his body type or...

OR: No doubt about it. When you go into a game on offense, you make
a couple moves and see what the defender is going to do. Then you pretty
much can figure out what he is going to do against you – whether he carries
his hands low or high, whether he is bumping or pushing, those type of
things.

You played in the ABA-NBA All-Star Games. The first game was in
Houston in 1971 and the second game was in New York in 1972. What are your
recollections of those games and playing against the ABA players? The ABA
players felt that it was a great measuring stick to play against you and the
other NBA stars.

OR: It was a measuring stick to a certain point. Basketball is
basketball. The game in Houston was really something. It was held in the
Astrodome. The court was kind of away from the stands and you got a
different perspective on the basket. The basket looked low because the
people in the stands were so far away. I thought that it was great for the
people in Texas to see that game. There was tremendous hoopla before the
game and it was a great game in which to play. The one in New York in 1972,
that was a good game. I don't remember all the details. It's been a while.
(The NBA won the first game in Houston 106-104-Rick Barry missed a
desperation three pointer for the ABA at the end. The NBA won the New York
game 125-120.) Well, games like that sometimes become a public relations game
in which you play everybody. If you really want to go out and run the score
up then you don't play everybody. Just because it is an All-Star Game doesn't
mean that you are playing as efficiently as you should. I think that it was
entertaining.

What are your recollections of playing against Pistol Pete?

OR: He came in at a great time because he came to the Hawks when
they had just won their division the year before. Pete made more money than
all the rest of the players on the team. Good offensive player, flashy
player, probably really helped save the franchise down there in Atlanta, no
doubt about it. He had a good shot. He was not a real skilled player per
se.

What do you mean by that?

OR: Defense, rebounding, boxing out, all those types of things. He
didn't have the physique for it.

Do you think that it would have changed anything about how he is
perceived if he had had the opportunity to play for a championship level
team early in his career? He played with Larry Bird and the Celtics late in
his career, but he had already blown out his knee by that time.

OR: I hate to say this, but he played for his father in college. He
took all the shots. I always thought that ruined him in terms of what you
are talking about, becoming the player that he could have become. He might
have become a much, much better player. He could score. He scored a lot in
college. I don't know what he scored in the pros. I think that he could have
become a much better all-around ball player if he had played for someone
else other than his father.

In some ways weren't his passing skills a little ahead of his time,
which led to him being called a hot dog?

OR: No. The thing about it is almost everyone could pass that way,
but we were kept from doing it by our coaches. We could throw it behind our
back or look one way and pass another but we only did it in the parks. I'll
tell you why we couldn't do it (in games): our coach said that he didn't want
people saying that we played like the Globetrotters. I played on an
all-black high school team and we didn't want people saying that we were
clowns. Pete could get away with it.

Now everyone does it and it seems to be more accepted. Magic Johnson
popularized it in the 1980s.

OR: He threw behind the back a little bit and
looked one way and
passed another and everyone would go 'Oh!' and think that it's
great. Years
ago almost everyone could do those things where I played in the
parks. Nowadays you'll ask a player to do something and he'll say,
'Coach I can't do
that. I've never done that before.' So you have to teach him. I
think that
teaching coaches are the norm now. You need a teaching coach who
understands
the game of basketball, not just some guy coming on the court
talking about
Xs and Os. You have to teach now – tell a kid how to box out, tell
him how to
pass, teach him footwork. Players don't understand that anymore.
They don't
have those things. They don't have those skills.

If you were to take a coaching job now, where would you start with a
young player? What is the most important thing to teach if you are kind of
building a player from scratch?

OR: It all depends what level you are talking about – high school,
college or pros. You have to look at a player and see what he needs. Some
guys can run, some guys can dribble. I think that everyone should be able to
dribble. Everyone should be able to pass. Otherwise, why are you out there?
What have you been doing all your life if you can't dribble a basketball, or
if you can't shoot a ball with your left hand if you are right-handed or
vice versa? I think that players should master those things and that is how
you become a better basketball player.

It really should start at a younger level than high school.

OR: It should, but you might get in a situation in which the player
doesn't learn it until he gets to you, so you have to go from there.

About Me

"A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them."--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture)

"The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery--in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks."--Edgar Allan Poe

"In chess what counts is what you know, not whom you know. It's the way life is supposed to be, democratic and just."--Grandmaster Larry Evans

"It's not nuclear physics. You always remember that. But if you write about sports long enough, you're constantly coming back to the point that something buoys people; something makes you feel better for having been there. Something of value is at work there...Something is hallowed here. I think that something is excellence."--Tom Callahan